Book Club Leaders, please visit my book club page for news and give-aways for selecting The Pirate Queen for your club!

For the person who has secretly dreamed of running away from home . . .

The Pirate Queen is a story that came to me over a decade and in small pieces that finally melded together to form a heroine’s journey.  I had heard a second-hand story about a woman who was about to leave her husband, a man who was a philanderer, only to be told he was terminally ill.  That story embedded in my emotions and eventually my imagination.   But that piece of the story was only a bit of kindling.

Then one night my hubby and I had settled down for a late night bowl of popcorn in front of a PBS show we’ve watched for years called Austin City Limits.  One of our favorite classic rock bands was playing. Okay, we were giddy. But the lead singer sang a song we’d not heard covered before.  The song told a story about  pirates and finding treasure. I grabbed a pen and started journaling. What about my heroine’s life, I thought, was like a pirate desperate to find treasure? What things did she believe were treasure but left her feeling empty? Then what real treasure might she discover along the way to which she would stake a claim and never let go, no matter what it cost her?Those were the early threads that led to the story of Saphora Warren and her Outer Banks journey.

Babe and I have enjoyed our jaunts to the Outer Banks and to the sailing village of Oriental, the town that eventually became the setting for Saphora’s get-away-turned-noose.

The process is as much fun as seeing the final product dressed in a beautiful new cover.  I’m planning a special Pirate’s Booty Prize Give-Away as time draws near.  So stay anchored because some lucky pirate queen will win a basket  of reading treasures.

The Pirate Queen

WaterBrook/Random House Publishers

Release Date: August 10, 2010

When I first started writing novels, I researched intensively, making copious notes about setting, architecture, and historical data about a town. Next I would make a list of traits that I thought might make the character seem more interesting, like the type of clothing worn, or their preference for foods. While you have to do that type of pre-writing and researching, it is also important that you research the interior landscape of your character.

Good fiction writing pays attention to research. But great fiction writing hardwires the reader into the mind of the character. Therefore, you must know your character through intimate details, the thoughts that seem fleeting to you; perhaps you don’t recognize them speeding past the thoughts you capture through cognizance. These are thoughts we’re taught not to blurt out in polite settings, and for good reason. But they are the things that humanize your character, that give the reader a glimpse into their soul. I often think when I read this deeper type of writing, “I’ve thought the same thing.” True, but I had to train myself to capture them and fit them into my story. Good fiction writing pays attention to research. But great fiction writing hardwires the reader into the mind of the character. Therefore, you must know your character through intimate details.

How do you capture such humanizing material? Do keep a journal so that while you are practicing watching the human condition up close, you are recording your observations. Then work at observing your own internal landscape. Next is the most difficult part–dramatizing the things you learned by writing them artfully into your narrative. The temptation will be at first to make a list of those internal thoughts. I do that because I’m setting the elements of thoughts into the story, like a gem into a setting. But writing them so that they become a natural, almost invisible, part of the interior monologue takes skill that separates the great writing from the good.

You can rush an ordinary novel, but you can’t rush a great one. Aim for great stories that are intimate and make the reader feel as if she is thinking those thoughts herself. Invite them into the character’s worries, tensions, repressed desires, and fleeting thoughts that seem like nothing, but in the end are powerful applications that become a part of the story’s movement. It will separate your writing from the average offerings and get you noticed.

Photography by Cory Hines

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The Story in Your Attic

I keep a photo jpg of a friend’s granddaughter. I’ve not met the child, but when the child’s mother was a baby, she was the same age as my firstborn son. She looks exactly like her mother at that age. When I look at the photo, memories rise up and tumble out through my emotions. I see her mother seated in a car seat next to my son in his little seat. He is tiny, she is twice his size. My son loved to sing, and would make up little mono-syllabic tunes since he could not yet speak. One afternoon as I was driving them for an outing, he broke into a song that must have been welling up for it spilled out of him with great joy. At once, this baby girl joined him and they sang together. A high soprano tune was coming out of him while she sort of grunted in a low bass. Both of them were bobbing rhythmically. I could not stop laughing.

A photo can evoke a story in you either because it summons up one that is already crouched dormant in your head, waiting to pounce. Or it may evoke a story in you from the tangle of your imagination. If you’re having trouble getting started, find a photo that summons to your imagination. Don’t bind it with too many elements. Free it up; write it down in colored pencil or in your journal. Stories are scattered all around, so pluck one out of the air or the attic and start writing.

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The Art of Getting Started

First sentences are a novelist’s signature. They should evoke a question in the reader answered by the novel. A first sentence should compel the editor to want to see the rest of the manuscript too. I spend hours on a first sentence and its opening paragraph. I’ve tossed more than I’ve kept.

“A bit of trouble with attempted murder sent Jeb Nubey over the Texarkana border in the unfortunate direction of hunger.” Fallen Angels

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TAKING THE HIGH ROAD. . . A WRITER’S JOURNEY TO LONGEVITY

Because the self-publishing market is so accessible and the general market outwardly tepid, it seems at the outset cruel to advise unpubbed writers not to self-publish. I remember how desire took over my emerging writer’s imagination. I managed to keep emotions in check, though, and that early choice became foundational to longevity as a novelist. If getting published gives you wings and not being published keeps you pecking on the ground with the chickens, I would opt, as a new writer, for flying lessons from those who’ve learned to soar.

I’m impressed with the small presses that create avenues for publishing and then work diligently to market those new writers to an eager readership that craves excellent fiction. That said, my advice to emerging writers is that you should not sell yourselves short by shortcuts that might serve only to circumvent the journey to high quality writing and publishing. Once you have developed a clear and lucid voice and a compelling story that’s un-put-down-able, the publishers will beat a path to your door. They’re all, both big and small houses, looking for the next fresh new voice. Be the answer to that challenge and you will not want for writing contracts. Believe, write every day, and stick to your mission until it is legitimately accomplished.

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Revealing Stories

Because novels are not film, characters cannot emote like actors. So desire, fear, anger and other internal beliefs  are revealed through the central character’s dialogue, exposition, and thought. These thought methods expose to  the reader the things that are not revealed through dialogue and action. Choosing to use internals instead of dialogue allows the reader to eavesdrop, but not the peripheral characters.  Learning when to use them is a matter of trial and error.

In Austen’s day, because of the mores of polite society, the heroine’s internal landscape served the story by revealing the conscious mind of the protagonist, the character who was too polite or fearful to reveal her true self to the other characters. The reader was allowed to know her intimately, and, therefore, believe her when her emotions finally erupted or succumbed to passion. When you hear that your reader must care about your character, this internal landscape is one of the skills you’ll use to achieve a reader’s emotional investment in your story.

Clotted exposition can either reveal too much or cover up important specificity when detailed revelation is needed. You are balancing your character’s life on a tense tightrope. The unknown is as important as the known to keep the story taut and pace flowing forward. You want to keep your character balanced on the story line and not have it collapse under her.

“Thought,” says Aristotle, is the process by which a person works backward in his mind from his goal to determine what action he can take toward that goal at a given moment.

The character may not fully understand what she wants, but we as the writer should know and be moving them toward subtle self-revelation, be it a guilty pleasure or a shocking disclosure.

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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Story

Not every writer can pinpoint the exact moment she or he wrote down the first few passionate words that changed everything. We’re more likely to remember the feeling it gave us. Remember when that was more important than knowing how to write?

My first essays were guided by a published novelist who had come to our small Arkansas college to teach freshman English. Instead of the typical research essays, he directed us to write confessional narrative. It was within those early pages that my writing voice sputtered to the surface.

Confessional writing gives the emerging writer free rein to explore voice through brief introspective vignettes. I think I wrote about the muddy sneakers in my dorm room or something that seemed meaningless. It was a jumpstart subject. Nonetheless, the confessional piece awakens the desire to write with a greater intent, truthfully interpreting   the human condition beneath the epidermis, so to speak. I remember how meaningful personal writing became even if I could not exactly express why. It forced me to interpret first my life and then persons whose lives touched mine, whether negatively or positively.

Through a narrative I dictated and clarified what was within my grasp to peel back honestly and see. While I may not remember the exact language that led me to that experience, I remember the feeling; it was as if I were breaking through forbidden walls. It’s a common thread among some contemporary American writers to explore issues like liberation from an autocratic existence. (Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, Bebe Moore Campbell) You may have employed one or both strategies in your fiction. But the feeling of breaking through to find that raw layer of truth is a place of  deep satisfaction, no matter what the theme.

Somewhere in that bruised place of discovery, we may eventually find that our writing voice becomes intertwined with our reason to write, the two engines inseparable. Writing provides a microcosm of why humans respond as they do and what causes a life to grow and then disintegrate. I know and understand the flawed life of the character after I’ve interpreted that character more reflectively. Digging for the truth helps each of us to be honest about our own deficiencies. Suffice it to say, we writers often find voice when we embark on the journey to find out why we need it.

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Writing the Bonfire

I started out grabbing any writing contract that I could find, no worries for how I was going to churn out the books. I drove myself crazy trying to meet the expectations of a market. Markets are impersonal. They are beasts. There is a groove we all can find; but if everyone is doing it, then the market’s glutted with a lot of similarly written stories. Acquisitions editors are looking for new and fresh, so where has all of the wheel spinning gotten us? My breaking point was at a conference where I wrestled with the angst that I did not fit in.

There was an actual codified language those authors spoke at their workshops, their fans dewey-eyed over the pearls they were casting about in their talks. The rooms were packed with emerging writers. I had to sit on the floor, the room was so full. I sat listening, but not connecting. I had just finished my fifth novel “for the market.” I did not possess this writer’s passion for book mill writing. I went to my hotel room, ordered room service, buried my face in a pillow, and hid. Writing for publication was being sold like snake oil, strewn as freely as those authors were throwing out their tomes for how to get published. But it was both a death and an awakening. If I could climb out of this suffocating pattern of writing, I’d find a quiet place to write my stories. It was a terrifying thought.

I knew that readers are looking for stories that they can’t put down. They want to be courted and then swept away–and I don’t mean pillow talk.  But to write the kind of story that was firing my imagination was going to take time. The white hot ember that creates kinesis for my character is not in the first draft that is laid down. It is around the seventh or eighth revision I’m finally able to locate the kinesis for the character and connection for the reader. Could I find a readership willing to wait for a story of depth?

Sure, book fans all read one after another; but I had to be at peace with realizing there are plenty of books for that. Why do we have to try and be a reader’s only author?  It was frightening to think such a thing! I needed to connect with fellow sojourners who found my story intersected with theirs. What books do you keep and which ones do you give to the library? The goal should be that my book is the keeper.

At the close of that conference, I headed back to the airport believing that if I had to fit into some sort of pre-formed mold, that I was going to look for a different kind of work. To my surprise, New York Times bestselling novelist Francine Rivers was on my same departure schedule.  Frani and I had an hour and a half wait until our flight at the same terminal. I shared my angst. Frani so practically said to me, “Forget following the pack. Write your story of passion and the market will find you.”

I’m not by any means an example of success for any writer to follow. But I’ve kept a steady spate of contracts since that encounter in a LA airport. I went home and wrote my first book of passion calling it Katrina’s Wings.  I sold it two weeks after writing it and vetted my first topnotch agent to boot!  Best of all,  I’ve been at peace ever since.  With grace I add that  if a writer is happy churning out one book after another–and I think each one who does that will hit a wall–then he or she should do that, if they are at peace with themselves.

The rest should keep blowing on the story until it becomes a bonfire.

PH

Calling all Book Clubs!!!

PIRATE QUEEN REWARDS CLUB IS COMING TO YOUR READING GROUP!

Patricia’s next novel,The Pirate Queen, will release August 10, 2010!

Here is how Book Club Leaders May Connect to the release of The Pirate Queen:

1. Let us know that you have selected The Pirate Queen for your club’s AUGUST 2010 READING.

2. Set up your own live Skype or speaker phone author chat with Patricia.

3. Win a Treasure Box of Pirate Queen Goodies including an autographed copy of The Pirate Queen!

Patricia holds a live chat with book clubs through either Skype or your speaker phone provided at the club meeting.  Skype is for book clubs with Internet access. You will need to upload the Skype program onto your computer.

Please let us know if your book club wants to schedule a live chat with Patricia, summer/fall 2010. You will also be notified if Patricia is coming to your area for her Pirate Queen Runaway Hearts Road Tour.

We will provide Reading Group club leaders with an email addy just for book clubs.

We thank you so much for being so excited about Patricia Hickman’s fiction!

“Patricia Hickman’s THE PIRATE QUEEN took me by surprise!  At the start, I thought I was reading a Southern-style Danielle Steel. Then I found I was settling into a one-of-a-kind family drama. Tender, compelling, outstanding. A keeper you will want to recommend to your friends–your best friends!” ~ Lyn Cote, Author of Her Abundant Joy

Patricia Hickman is available for Bookstore Events, Keynote Addresses, and Workshops.

You may schedule her through this website or by contacting Naomi Duncan:

naomi.duncan@ambassadorspeakers.com

Or Telephone 615-370-4700

What Others Are Saying About Patricia Hickman:

“Patricia Hickman has breadth of heart and depth of understanding…don’t miss her passionate voice on the platform and on the written page.” 

– Patsy Clairmont, Author of “I Second That Emotion”; Women of Faith Anchor Speaker

“Hickman’s visit to Foothills Christian College was engaging and uplifting for our faculty, staff, and students.  She was both professional and personable; her love for and knowledge of her craft (fiction) were highly evident, contributing to an atmosphere of intensity, excitement, and encouragement.” – Maryanne Grimmett, Instructor of English

“Please do your attendees a favor, and add Patty to your faculty.  She will be an outstanding addition to the experience.”

– Ed Southern, North Carolina Writer’s Network

“Patty Hickman draws in an audience with humor and emotion that leaves them in awe, anticipating what might come next.  She brings life and hope to the people who hear and read the words she is inspired to pen.”

– Morna Gallagher, Karitos Festival of the Arts

What Conferees Are Saying About Patricia Hickman . . .

“Fantastic speaker and practical too!”

“Bravo!”

“Fun!”

“Changed my life!”

“Very helpful and timely!”

“Sensitive, insightful, articulate presenter!”

“Genuine and honest.”

“Wonderful and compassionate!”

RT Gold Medallion Reader’s Choice Award

Katrina Hurley is coming of age in a family she believes fate has dropped her into by mistake. As she and her younger sister, Eden, grow up within the confines of an emotionally fragile family, Katrina struggles to find autonomy and self-worth. A gifted young woman misunderstood by her clannish and controlling parents, she longs to fly away and discover what miracles lie beyond the bounds of her childhood home in Mockingbird Valley, Arkansas. What she discovers is nothing short of miraculous.

As Katrina’s tale unfolds, the reader is offered an intimate, sometimes painful yet oftentimes humorous glimpse into the lives of two sisters who take different paths in life, but in the end rediscover one another.

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What others have said about “Katrina’s Wings”…

“Katrina’s Wings was everything I expected and more. Hickman’s writing is very mature and smooth, wonderful images and style, great pacing. The characters are real people – all flawed, many quirky, but richly endearing – all a sign of very high quality writing. This book is what reading addicts call a “keeper”. Bravo!”
- Francine Rivers, NY Times best-selling author of Her Mother’s Hope

“Katrina’s Wings is a phenomenal work of art. If you are searching for a story with a deep and abiding music all its own, a depth seldom found in today’s literature, and a vision of hope in an imperfect world, buy this book. Katrina’s Wings is more than a delight. It is a gift.”
- T. Davis Bunn, best-selling author

“I was captivated by KATRINAS’ WINGS, an irresistible novel with unique charm and depth. This is Ms. Hickman’s absolute best!”
-Robin Lee Hatcher, best selling author

A moving, richly told story set in a small fishing village in coastal North Carolina, Patricia Hickman’s witty yet deeply poignant novel portrays a  recently widowed heroine who must learn to let go of the past and trust an uncertain future.

March Longfellow, now a widow and single mother to a young son, a dog, and a sickly cat, also owns the small newspaper in Candle Cove, North Carolina. That seems like enough hats to wear, but when her mother passed away, she also took up her mom’s banner. Her dad is the minister over a small Presbyterian flock in the coastal town and March sees running the church’s activities as her personal life’s mission. Then onto the scene comes a young widowed minister, a usurper who her father has been secretly grooming to take over for him. Problems arise when March sets out to undermine the arrangement and run off the new minister before he has a chance to take over. All would be well if March were not falling for him and his beautiful kids.  It is the small things that hold back life’s tides.

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“From the touching opening, Sandpebbles is an emotionally charged novel that takes readers to the depths of despair and back.  I am thoroughly amazed with the author’s courage to keep writing after learning every parent’s greatest fear.  Ms. Hickman created a heartrending story of love, loss, and the bravery to face and conquer your fears.” 4 Stars!  (Readers Gold Medallion Award Winner)                                        –The Romance Readers Connection

“Hickman is a great talent. Her wisdom shines from the pages, as does her compassion. Sandpebbles is a gift to treasure.”                                           –T. Davis Bunn, Author of The Great Divide

“Patricia Hickman’s contemplative style is poignant and poetic with deep insights into the hearts of her characters. A keeper to be read again and again.”                           –Terri Blackstock, Author of Newpoint 911 Series

“As a new widow, I want to put this book into the hands of as many people as possible and say, ‘If you really want to understand the journey of grief, read this!’ “  –Stephanie Grace Whitson, Author and Christy Finalist

Jeb Nubey and Fern Coulter have finally set a wedding date, but plans are derailed when Jeb answers the call to lead a wealthy community church. The church happens to be in Oklahoma, which raises ghosts from Fern’s past–a past she prefers remained buried. Tempers ignite and Fern is troubled by the secrets that threaten to grow into scandal the longer Jeb remains in her hometown. To make matters worse, in the midst of their struggles, Jeb and Fern must also deal with the disappearance of Jeb’s oldest charge, Angel. A dangerous young man named Nash has played on the girl’s vulnerabilities and lured her away with the promise of filling the emptiness she feels. Additionally, his gangster ties cast Angel in a perilous light.
As the final episode in the Millwood Hollow Series unfolds, the Coulters find themselves in a swirl of impending disaster and redemptive love, trying the faith and devotion of a patchwork family. As Jeb and Fern prepare to take their vows, will they learn that broken circles can be restored, and can they find beauty in life’s flaws?

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What others are saying about Earthly Vows . . .

“PATRICIA HICKMAN makes dwelling in the Depression a pleasure. Her characters spring to life and her language is something to be savored. EARTHLY VOWS is a treasure reminding us that life’s simple joys are the ones worth having.”
–Kristen Billerbeck, best-selling author of What a Girl Wants

“Patricia Hickman’s Earthly Vows, the finale to her popular Millwood Hollow series, presents a deeply emotional voyage into the human hearts–the good, the wandering, and the misguided. Truth shimmers in every phrase.”                –Lyn Cote, author of the Women of Ivy Manor series

Despite the hard times that still grip the town, Jeb Nubey, now a dependable minister and accidental parent to three orphans, happily settles into the quiet routines of Nazareth, Arkansas. Even the pretty schoolteacher, Fern, who once seemed so cold to him, finally returns his attentions.

Then one fateful night, a small package is delivered to Nubey’s doorstep: an infant girl. And the baby is black. Unable to find a relative for the baby anywhere, Jeb feels obligated to care for her. This simple act of charity, however, awakens the troubled undercurrent of racism in this South of the Great Depression. The townsfolk of Nazareth find themselves divided – what are they to make of rocks thrown through windows, graffiti on the church’s wall, the child’s new black nanny, and a craven attack in an apple orchard? And who will win the battle for the heart of this one small town?

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What Others Are Saying About Whisper Town . . .

“Out of the Depression-era mystique of the Ozarks comes a parable for our time. Thank you, Patricia Hickman, for daring us to get on our knees–to not just pray, but to wash feet.”
–Neta Jackson, best-selling author of the Yada-Yada Prayer Group series.

“Hickman’s grasp of southern style is impeccable. . . Fans will look forward to the next installment in this entertaining series.”
–Library Journal

The Second Novel in the Millwood Hollow Series

For Reverend Jeb Nubey, returning to Nazareth has meant the smell of freshly baked bread in the mornings and the reverie of church picnics by the lake. But Nazareth’s peaceful landscape is threatened when an ambitious banker starts buying up large plots of land and buildings in order to control the commerce and politics of the quaint town.  Adding fuel to the fire is Winona, the banker’s attractive daughter, who’s been making pointedly generous donations to the Reverend’s humble Church in the Dell. Throw in a botched poultry deal and a stolen church bell, and all at once Reverend Jeb is up to his eyeballs in trouble.

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“Patricia Hickman writes with a spare, lyrical beauty perfect for the tale of the Great Depression. NAZARETH’S SONG is 1930s America!”
–DeAnna Julie Dodson, author of In Honor Bound

“Hickman, a writer with a flair for exacting and lyrical, but never cumbersome, description, delivers fresh-picked words again and again. I love the way she writes! You will too.”
–Lisa Samson, Author of The Living End

“I fell in love with Patricia Hickman’s writings after Katrina’s Wings. Her characters are believable, especially Jeb, who battles his own insecurities while tending three castaway children and trying to win the affections of the schoolteacher in the town of Nazareth, Arkansas. I can’t wait for the next in the series.”
- Amazon.com Reviewer

In a case of mistaken identity in the town of Nazareth, Jeb Nubey and the Welby siblings are suddenly thrust into the limelight when the townspeople believe them to be the long-awaited Reverend Gracie and his three children. While the citizens of Nazareth surround them with security and a quick meal ticket, Angel, the oldest Welby, must work fast to help shape Jeb into a Bible-spouting preacher – an impossible task, since Jeb is illiterate. What ensues is a delightful blend of mayhem and deceit as the fallen angels of Nazareth rise to the occasion with a twisted sense of justice and a fleeting measure of luck.

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“I was instantly charmed!  No writer can transport a reader to the South quite like Patricia Hickman.  Touching, funny, and filled with love, Fallen Angels will be one of the best books you’ll read all year!”                                                                                                          –Robin Lee Hatcher, Bestselling author of Firstborn

“Hickman’s grasp of southern style is impeccable. . . Fans will look forward to the next installment in this entertaining series.”                                                                                                                                       –Library Journal

“Hickman knows how to spin an endearing yarn.  This sweet story should delight readers who enjoy a gentle, well-written read.”                                                                                                                             –Publisher’s Weekly